Today the Games Convention 2006 kicked
off in Leipzig, Germany – well at least for members of the press.
Games Convention is the largest computer games exhibition in Europe
and after the downscaling of E3 probably the biggest in the world. This year about 150.000 visitors are expected, up from 136.000 last year.
You need to know that Games Convention
(GC) is fundamentally different in comparison to E3. While I've never
been to E3 myself, I know that it was restricted to professional
visitors, while GC is open for everybody. This year any visitor may
come from August 24th till 27th and check out
the latest, soon to be released games. Sometimes you even have the
chance to talk to developers.
For developers, a special event called
GC Developers Conference (GCDC) already started a few days ago. It
includes presentations of famous developers from all over the world
including Bill Roper and Peter Molyneux.
As with any gaming-related event, some
hardware vendors are also present. On E3 ATI and NVIDIA often preview
their latest technology with the newest games, not commercially
available at that time. At GC they also have to chance to reach
possible customers. This year however, I noticed that hardware
companies scaled down their presence significantly. I can't name
specific examples here, but you notice when only half of the
companies which had a booth last year, have one on GC 2006.
Other companies are trying to find
partners in order to save booth costs and those partners might be
partnering with someone else too...I think you get the picture.
Still, I will try to find out a few new tidbits in various hardware
categories and of course some new directions in game development. If
there is anything newsworthy, I'll keep you posted. The more
standard-stories can be read in German on K-Hardware, which I'm
writing for.